


Thaw

by clarkeneedsbellamy



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 11:52:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1857048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarkeneedsbellamy/pseuds/clarkeneedsbellamy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ending up trapped in a jeep with her ex-boyfriend had at no point factored into her plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thaw

Her first semester finals left an ache in her fingers.  A crying toddler had beaten every minute of her hour-long flight home into her skull.  Somehow, her luggage had been among the last to appear at baggage claim.

Even among the chilled air, light snow, and blaring horns rampant outside the airport doors, Octavia Blake’s waiting car is the first welcome sight she’s had all afternoon.

Then the front door opens.  The raised corners of Clarke’s lips falter and fall.

“Need help with your bags, princess?”

She tightens her hold on her luggage without thinking.  Without knowing if she  _can_ think of anything other than a desperate plea that this is a horrible, cruel joke. Clarke’s toes suddenly itch to run back to the airport, towards a plane, and fly as far away from Bellamy Blake as technologically possible. (She’s fairly certain she’d seen something about a flight to China.  China could be promising.)

Instead, Clarke clears her throat and steadies her voice.  “Octavia was supposed to pick me up.” 

Bellamy shrugs, ignores her clenched grip, and yanks her suitcase towards the trunk. “O got held up. Asked me to come instead.”

“Really.”

He ignores both the crease of her forehead and the skeptical cant of her head. “Really.”  He goes to grab another bag from her feet. If he says anything else, it passes straight over the haze that’s settled around Clarke’s senses.

It’s been four months since she last saw Bellamy; an entire semester at college since they broke up and broke all contact.  Or, more precisely, he broke all contact.  She broke a throbbing pain into her fingertips calling and texting and calling again until she finally realized he wasn’t going to answer.

Clarke briefly debates the practicality of flagging down a taxi, takes a sharp breath, and folds herself down into the passenger seat.

It’s fine. She’s moved on. She can get through thirty minutes of strained silence with her ex-boyfriend and quiet fury at his sister.

Bellamy pulls himself back into the driver’s seat a moment later.

Strained silence lasts for all of three minutes.  “So why isn’t Spacewalker flying back with you?  I hear you two are attached at the hip.”  The mocking lilt beneath Bellamy’s words slices against the buzz of the engine and the whistle of wind-rustled snowflakes.

Her tongue goes leaden, holding any half-formed response hostage behind her teeth. That should be the end of any conversation between them.  And it might have been, were she more adept at holding her tongue. “What does that name even  _mean_?” 

“Not my fault that Collins is deluded enough to think he’ll ever end up in space.”

Clarke counts the stains lining the car’s ceiling.  “At least he has ambitions.”

Her eyes dart down to his jaw, just in time to see it clench.

Playing on his insecurities should be beneath her.  Far beneath her. The syllables started cutting at her throat before they even reached her mouth, slicing her tongue raw as she muttered them into the car’s warm air.

But she was supposed to be catching up with Octavia right now, pulling through some fast food drive-through for overly salted french fries, and bickering over pop radio stations.  The tension in her shoulders was supposed to have eased under the routine of nearly ten years of friendship.

_Fifteen spots.  Sixteen…_  

Ending up trapped in a jeep with her ex-boyfriend had at no point factored into her plan.

Raking a hand into her purse, Clarke gropes for something resembling sustenance. Her fingers close around the curled wrapper of a half-eaten power bar; the elation it send coursing warm through her stomach is near laughable.

“And what about your ambitions, princess?”  Slumping his head back, Bellamy slants a glance towards her.  “Columbia everything you imagined?”

Mouth full of granola, Clarke takes her time crunching each morsel. Finally – one long eye roll from Bellamy later - she swallows and works her shoulders into a shrug. (If one sleeve of her sweater happens to slip down with the motion, his eyes definitely do not linger on the exposed span of her skin.)

Leveling a glare at him, she doesn’t bother to adjust the stray cashmere. “I didn’t know you cared.”

“Just making conversation.”

“Well, don’t.”

Running a hand along the nape of her neck, Clarke shifts against the tan leather seatback in an effort to roll at least one knot of tension from her back.  A wasted effort.  She finds a new knot for every inch she squirms.

“Tense?”

She would like nothing more than to keep her eyes trained on the floor – so, of course, she forces herself to meet Bellamy’s amused glance.  Mouth drawn into a smirk and eyebrows towards his forehead, he betrays no sign of noticing her glare. 

“Hardly.” She’s fine.  Perfectly, absolutely fine.  She’s definitely not remembering backaches of months past – not recalling the pressure of his hands on her skin, the kneading of his fingers, the warmth of his chest when she finally gave in and sank against him…

Her phone buzzes in her purse.  For the speed with which she grabs for it, it might as well double as a life preserver.

_Unread Message: Octavia_

Fingers darting against the keyboard, Clarke narrows her eyes.  “So Octavia asked you to pick me up?”

He grates a wary  _yes_. 

“So you didn’t  _steal her car_  from her?” She waves her phone towards him. “She mentioned something about duress.”

Bellamy shrugs.  Clarke texts Octavia that she cannot be held legally responsible if she ends up killing her brother for kidnapping her.

It’s not as though she doesn’t have prior cause. 

When he does respond, his eyes are still trained on the road. “It’s a thirty minute drive. You’ll survive.”

“Twenty-seven actually,” she chimes, still looking down at her phone. “To be precise.” Every less minute between them and her front door is worth noting.

“Good to know you haven’t changed.”

Her forced smile slips a centimeter.  She closes her teeth back around the remainder of her granola bar in an attempt to revive it.

A lot of things have changed.  The fact that her only knowledge of his last semester at college comes from Octavia high among them, and that he apparently knows next to nothing about her first not far behind.  Even before they started dating, even when she thought that she hated him, they still wound up bantering their way into conversation more often than not.  What she knows about him now is impersonal. Vague details that Octavia has managed to work into phone calls.  Like that he’s pissed over some 8 AM lecture, has managed to avoid drinking himself into a coma thus far, and very little else.

She should have expected that all he’d bother to learn about her own freshman year was that she’d started dating Finn.  Clarke rolls her eyes towards the car’s roof.  After all, Finn was all he he’d been willing to talk about through the last leg of their relationship.  Mainly, the fact that Finn was headed with Clarke to New York, while he was staying behind at the local school to which he’d transferred two years earlier when his mother had passed away and Octavia been left alone.

Which still begs the question…  “How did you even know about me and Finn, anyway?” her voice breaks the stiff quiet that had settled between them before she can remember to shove the question back into her mouth.

“Take a guess.”

A groan stretches its way through Clarke’s throat.  “Great. So your sister’s been, what, helping you keep tabs on me?”

Bellamy crosses his arms.  “I wasn’t aware you and Spacewalker were restricted information.”

“That would be because we—”  _weren’t_  “—aren’t.”

“Of course not.”  Her shoulders tense at the gruff laugh that slices against his breath.  “Things worked out perfectly for you, didn’t they?”

Raising her chin, she angles a glare at him.  “Excuse me?”

“Come on, Clarke.”  His smirk feels like a slap.  “You dumped me. You got your perfect boyfriend. I’d say it all went right according to plan.”

Fury wrenches against her mouth like pliers, forcing her lips apart. “ _I dumped you?”_

He ignores her.  “How long did you wait anyway? My bet is on a few weeks. O swears it was longer.”

“And exactly how long did you wait before finding some poor wasted girl to sleep with?”

“I don’t need to get a girl drunk.  You know that. Actually, I’d say you know that better than—”

“Oh, shut up.”

Silence cuts its way between them once more, until her tongue manages to force itself free of her teeth’s grip.  “And, not that it’s any of your business, but three months.  As long as you and I dated.”

“Keeping up appearances.  I should have figured.”

“Yeah.” She wants to hit him. Preferably hard and with a baseball. “ _That’s_  why I waited.”

Another second of silence.   _Twenty-five minutes and counting._ Jaw ticking and arms uncrossing into fists, it’s Bellamy who cracks it this time.  “You know, you’re one who made it clear you wanted to see other people.  Don’t turn this around on me.”

Clarke’s arms twine tighter together.  “The only thing I made clear is that you might  _want_ to see other people when I left for college.  I said that we should slow things down.  You responded by not talking to me for four months.”

He opens his mouth.  She snaps words against her tongue before he can mutter a syllable.  “And I tried calling you.  Several times.  More than several times. So don’t ‘turn that around’ on me.”

Every line of his face tightens.  “I wasn’t going to call you back just so you could break up with me over the phone.”

“I never wanted to break up with you, you absolute  _idiot_.” The tip of Clarke’s tongue curves to stab the backs of her teeth.  “Octavia told you that.  She couldn’t have not told you that.”

“Sure. She told me.  Octavia also thinks  _The Notebook_ is realistic fiction.”  She’s not sure when she moved away from her slump against the window, but Clarke is suddenly aware of just how close his shoulders are.  They loom beside her own, anger throbbing visibly along their curve.  “And if you’d just waited until Thanksgiving before hooking up with Collins – damn it, Clarke, I was going to talk to you, I didn’t mean to—”

“Well, you did.”

His shoulder blades slam back against his seat.  “Blame me.  Fine. You got your prince fucking charming out of the deal, so what’s your problem exactly.”

“God, will you  _stop talking about Finn_.” Clarke wants to make a metronome of beating her head – or, preferably, his – against the windshield. “We stopped seeing each other weeks ago.”

Shifting, his stare suddenly turns from her cinched lips to the white knuckles of his fists.    

Clarke is too aware of her breathing – too aware of the process of forcing air in and out from her noise, of the noise made by funneling it through her mouth. “How long did you wait?” She’s too aware of the cracks marring an otherwise cold segue.  “Octavia would never say.” Her eyes drag themselves to the ceiling, only to realize that they’ve lost their place counting its stains.   “I don’t know why. You would only have been making my point for me – I moved away and you wanted someone else.  It happens all the time.”

She can almost see the imprints his teeth grind into his lip.  “Clarke.”  Bellamy utters her name like he wants to say more.  She goes on before he can claim the chance, the words she spent months ranting within the bounds of her head finally tumbling from her mouth.

“I mean, it didn’t happen to me, but that’s hardly relevant.”

“ _Clarke_.”  Her name sounds jagged on his voice, as though it burns his tongue to form it.  “It wasn’t - it didn’t mean anything.”

Her lips part in a weak nod.  “Finn should have.”

There’s a forced briskness to his voice when he continues.  “So what did Spacewalker do to screw himself over?”

“Nothing.”

Incredulity spikes his eyebrows.  “Nothing?”

She’s managed to count twenty marks on the roof by the time she answers. “Apparently, three months wasn’t long enough.”  

He spasms a deep breath.  “It wasn’t long enough for me either.”

“And how many girls did you have to sleep with to figure that out?” Her lips stretch with the question until they throb. 

“How many times did you have to fuck Collins?” 

“That’s not an answer.”

“Neither is that.”

No, it’s not.  But she’s hardly about to tell Bellamy that the crush she’d nursed on Finn Collins since sixth grade had dwindled and died within the space of a few weeks; that every time he’d touched her, all she could think was that his skin was the wrong shade, his hair too long, and his grip too soft.

“Pull over.”

His eyes scan the windshield as though some deer, drunk driver, or other reasonable explanation for her sudden order will appear.

“Pull over, Bellamy.  Now.”

He looks at her as though the air pressure from her flight might have given her brain damage, but obeys with a jerked halt towards the side of the road. Arms crossing against his chest in what she can’t help but read as a challenge, he turns towards her. “Care to explain, princess?”

Bellamy’s chest seems to heave closer to hers by the minute.  All she can think of now is some other girl’s hands wrapped around it, tugging at his shirt, yanking at his hair.  The mere image is enough to make her want to bleach her brain. She settles for eliminating the remaining gap between them and wreaking her mouth against his. His surprise seeps against her skin, steeling him stiff.  Were her mouth not otherwise occupied, she might have frowned.  As things are, her lips push further for every moment he remains still, her grip deeper into his hair for every muscle he keeps locked.

Finally, he manages to wrench himself a breath.  “What hell do you think you’re pulling, Clarke?”

“Shut up.” Clarke’s lips are still close enough to brush his as she speaks.  “I’m still furious.  This doesn’t change anything. Just shut up and put your damn hands on me.”

Bellamy blinks, stares – and then, before she can register ever rising from her seat or knocking against the center console, she’s in his lap with his fingers clenched hard around her waist.  He molds her lips against his and stabs his tongue past her teeth, siphoning breath after breath from her.  Clarke tightens her legs around his waist, kicking her feet out in careless abuse of the light padded leather.  Her hands work their way beneath the worn cotton of his shirt to grip and rake until she’s sure even the perfectly filed curve of her nails will leave a mark.

She abandons the ceiling and makes a new game of guessing the number of marks she’s left on his skin.  Dragging a path up his back, her nails bury themselves deep into its plain for every inch of his body that fits against hers, for every moan he forces from her lips, for every burgeoning mark his teeth nip into the skin of her neck. 

She missed him, she needs him, and she hates him for it.

The cable knit cashmere of her v-neck stretches to accommodate the width of his hands, distorting itself to fit the edges of his knuckles and the curves of his fingertips.  When his palms eventually slide back down the slope of her stomach, it’s only to stop firm around her thighs, pulling her against him until they’re twined tight together and falling against the steering wheel.  She curls her toes along his lower back, keeping her legs locked tight around his hips as her hands scramble back into his dark waves for purchase.

He murmurs her name again and again into the shoulder she’d left exposed earlier, pulling her sleeve further down the length of her arm.  Biting down hard on her tongue, Clarke erases his name from its tip letter by letter. 

This isn’t about them. This is about Finn, some faceless college girl, and the nausea both figments send coiling through her stomach.

But the shape of his mouth has to ruin it, morphing into something disturbingly close to  _missed you too, princess_  and beating away at her certainty.

Her teeth follow her tongue along the cartilage of his ear.   _Shut up_. She’s ready to grit out another warning when her every muscle stills. His, still warm on her skin, freezes in turn.

The tap that knocks against the car window doesn’t come from either of them.

On the other side of the spotted glass, a woman with snow-littered hair gawks at them from behind tortoise-rimmed glasses.  Even with the window still closed, Clarke can hear her mumble something about wanting to make sure they weren’t having any car trouble before rushing back to her minivan, her stumbled steps sparing scarce care for ice.  Probably because of the scene she’d just happened upon. Possibly because Bellamy’s glare could chop wood.

Even once the car is nowhere in sight, its image scalds Clarke’s cheeks.

“Oh, God…”

Fingers shuddering from his hair, they fall in tandem towards the dark denim of her jeans. Cold air seems to blast against her skin as Bellamy raises his face to bore a stare against hers.  She’s not sure she’s ready for the hollowness that will come when his body jerks free; so she does her best to move away first. When his hands lift from her hips, Clarke almost believes he might help her – only to realize that his palms have only moved to curl against the steering wheel, conspiring with the car to trap her between the bars of his arms. 

“Bellamy, let go of me.”

He raises an eyebrow.  She imagines it would likely look more smug if his breath weren’t so ragged, and his lips not quite so swollen.  “Already did.”

Exasperation pierces her glare.  “I didn’t mean your hands.”  Although she certainly wouldn’t mind if he allowed those to slip back to his sides. She means the fact that she’s still straddling his hips, that every ridge of his body is still arched against every line of hers, and that she can still feel the rise and fall of his breathing.

He leans his mouth down to her ear before finally obliging.  “You didn’t mean what you said earlier either.” Bellamy’s fingers smooth the tangles of her hair before his chest draws away from hers at long last. “This means something.”

She gropes for words of protest, pulls at her shirt’s hem, and shifts back into the passenger’s seat. 

(Her teeth gnaw trenches into her lower lip for the remainder of the drive home.)


End file.
